Notice of Public Hearings for the First Year Bike Lanes

City Planning’s David Somers has two blog posts today to explain how these prioritized bike lane projects will be moving forward. This post covers the public hearings for the project and the approval process afterwards, while his second post goes into more detail about the Draft EIR. – Nate Baird

The City Planning Department has scheduled four public hearings to hear public comment on the First Year bicycle lanes. The projects include the nearly 40 miles of bicycle lanes that were evaluated in the recently completed Draft EIR in addition to one mile of bike lanes along Sunset Blvd. west of Figueroa St. The 40 miles of bike lanes include the first proposed protected bicycle lanes or ”cycle tracks” in the City as part of the MyFig Streetscape project, as well as strategic gap closures such as Venice Blvd. along with the introduction of critical bikeways in all major geographies of the City. The Sunset Blvd. bike lanes were recently proposed and will, for the first time provide a direct connection to the neighborhoods of Hollywood, Silver Lake, and Echo Park to Downtown by a continuous bikeway. The Traffic and Safety Assessment for the Sunset Blvd. bike lanes is available here.

The public hearings, required under AB 2245 in order to receive an exemption under CEQA, will offer an official forum forinterested parties to express their support, or concern over the proposed bicycle lanes. Each public hearing corresponds to a geographic area that includes a group of bicycle lanes proposed for that area. The staff presentation at each hearing will exclusively focus on the traffic and safety impacts of those proposed bicycle lanes for that area. Public hearing portion will follow the staff presentations.

Public hearings will be held as follows:

Northeast Area

February 13, 2013, 6 pm to 8:30 pm

Los Angeles River Center & Gardens

California Building

570 West Avenue 26

Los Angeles, CA 90065

Central Area

February 14, 2013, 6 pm to 8:30 pm

Caltrans District 7 Building, Room 01.040 A, B and C

100 S. Main St.

Los Angeles, CA 90012

West Area

February 19, 2013, 6 pm to 8:30 pm

LADOT Western Parking Enforcement Office,

11214 W. Exposition Blvd.

Los Angeles, CA 90064

Valley Area

February 21, 2013, 6 pm to 8:30 pm

North Hollywood Regional Library

5211 Tujunga Ave.

North Hollywood, CA 91601

Staff will also conduct a webinar on February 20th from 2 PM to 4 PM to review the traffic and safety impacts of the entire list of proposed projects. The webinar reservation can be made here.

Approval Process Going Forward

LADOT will not make a final decision to approve all 40 miles of bike lanes projects included in the First Year project list at the same time, but rather intends to proceed in tiers by: 1) approving a subsection of bicycle lanes as proposed, 2) approving a subsection of bicycle lanes as modified in design based on public input and traffic and safety analysis, and 3) deferring the implementation of some of the more difficult bicycle lanes to a later date. LADOT may proceed with the implementation of some of the bicycle lanes from the project list upon filing a Notice of Exemption, and after review of the traffic and safety impacts contained in the Draft EIR and public input has been received and responded to. Subject to final approval by LADOT, the installation of the bicycle lanes is anticipated to take less than 12 months, and the completion of the first tier of bicycle lanes would begin sometime in 2013. Implementation of the proposed project would create a greater network of connectivity and would help meet the goals of the 2010 Bicycle Plan.

[…] L.A. cyclists finally have some real reasons to get excited as plans are unveiled for the city’s first cycle tracks and raised bike lanes. Meanwhile, the city speeds up key projects by opting out of environmental review; hearings for first year projects will be held next month. […]

[…] proposed protected bicycle lanes or ”cycle tracks” (part of the MyFig Streetscape project). According to planner David Somers, lanes like those proposed along Sunset Blvd. will move us toward greater network connectivity by […]